William Whyte’s new chronicle of the university as an institution cleverly interprets the long history of these places of learning through the physical materials that led to, influenced or grew from its development: straw, stone, flesh, blood, silk, paper, iron and concrete.
It is true that the university is effectively a European invention but it has been widely taken up, reinvented and grafted on to native roots on every inhabited continent. Whyte accordingly sets his sights broadly. He moves from the straw the first students of the University of Paris had to purchase to sit on and sleep on through to the concrete of an Israeli-designed university in Nigeria, covering a wide range of territory in between.
